


Children of That

by thefriendyouleftinthehallway



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF Q (James Bond), Gen, POV Third Person Limited, Q (James Bond) is a Holmes, Talking, except in a slightly unstable fashion wherein it swings into third person q's at the end, he kills some people so if you're searching that tag you're not gonna hate this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 23:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20920478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefriendyouleftinthehallway/pseuds/thefriendyouleftinthehallway
Summary: A short piece, probably horrifically OOC. Bond arrives at Q’s residence to find a bloodstained Quartermaster and seven dead men. Although Q was perfectly justified, they discuss the implications. Later, an unimpressed Mycroft Holmes walks into MI6 to request they drop enquiries into his little brother’s actions.





	Children of That

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this is horrible. It might interest you to know that I’m not in either of these fandoms. Just a by-the-way. 
> 
> More detail: If you don’t know already from a previous James Bond fic of mine, you’ll benefit from knowing that my only experience with the James Bond fandom is skipping through Skyfall and SPECTRE to watch the scenes with Ben Whishaw (Q) in them. ONLY those scenes. None of you should know this one, as I haven't discussed it on my account before, but while I am very familiar with BBC Sherlock, I’m not in the fandom as I’m not hugely fanatic about the show itself and I tend to find the content produced by Sherlock fans quite repulsive. 
> 
> So if this is shit, I take solace knowing that I've let you know that I didn’t have any idea what I was doing and it was one in the morning.

Bond had been on his way to see Q, having received some kind of summons but not with a particular sense of urgency, when he heard it. Gunshots coming right from where he was headed to. With the cold twist of concern in his gut, he ran straight for his Quartermaster’s home. What he did not expect to find was seven dead men lying on the ground, outfitted for a stealth mission, blood leaking from the gunshot wounds in their cooling corpses. What he really didn’t expect to find was an uninjured Q who appeared to be doing some sort of breathing exercise, standing in the middle of the mess with a warm gun tight in his grip, his eyes locked on Bond, his pale skin and paisley pyjamas stained with blood spatter. 

Pushing shock or concern to the back of his mind, Bond spoke. “M isn’t going to like this,” he said.

“M can fuck off,” Q muttered, wiping his face with his shirtsleeve but only succeeding in turning a neat-looking spray of red into a chaotic smear.

Bond suppress a smirk. “You’re not authorised to kill without express orders. There  _ will _ be paperwork, possible enquiries. Might even make a case of it. It’s not a legal walk in the park, you know.”

“007, I was  _ ambushed _ , in my  _ home _ , by a hostile party intent on  _ killing _ me, and I  _ defended myself _ . So, to reiterate: M can  _ fuck off _ .” Q seemed to have realised that he was making a mess of the blood on his face and sought out a tissue from a box on a coffee table in the centre of the room to aid him in his endeavour. 

“Merely stating facts, Quartermaster,” Bond said calmly. 

“Thank you so much for that, agent. Your concerns are duly noted. Now should you call this in, or should you leave me to my own business and let me do it myself?” Q asked, though his words did not sound as irritated as Bond had expected. He sounded peculiarly calm. 

“For a man covered in blood you’re very well put-together,” Bond commented. “Not planning on making a habit of this, I hope.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Q breathed. “Why is it that everyone seems to assume that emotional stability in trying situations is an indicator I’m about to become psychotic. Can a person not have an advantage and use it? Am I supposed to pretend to have an emotional breakdown every time I remotely detonate an explosive or plant false material online to get someone killed, for the benefit of the image of my character to those around me?” The stiffness of annoyance leached into Q’s posture as he said the words, but once he was silent again it all bled out of him with one fluid sigh, and a gentle, breathy chuckle. 

“Maybe I should take the fall for you,” Bond said. “Save everyone the paperwork.”

“You’re not giving the clean-up teams enough credit. Within 24 hours we’d be caught in a lie. I don’t need babying, I can take this like the man I am,” Q told Bond steadily. 

“Yes, but I’m sure you can understand my concern regarding--” 

“Bond,” Q said firmly, cutting 007 off instantly. “My younger sister has been incarcerated in Sherrinford since she was barely old enough to cut the crusts of her own sandwich. One of my older brothers was once considered… shall we say,  _ eligible _ , too, though in the end that was decided against.”

“I’m sorry, but if you’re, what, fighting for your case here, that’s not exactly a fantastic start,” Bond interjected quickly. 

“If you didn’t interrupt then perhaps I could be allowed to get to the point,” Q said in a surprisingly authoritative tone, leveling eye contact with Bond in a way that seemed to assert conversational dominance. “Both my sister and my brother had killed only one person respectively, but by the click of a computer key I have killed hundreds. The reason that one of us is in prison and I am not is a matter of stability. My siblings all have different brands of instability, but I am quite stable. If I was unstable and considered a threat I wouldn’t have seen the outside of a cell since age 17. Do you really think that this assessment of my character which has evidently been made is going to change because suddenly the blood on my hands is literal?” 

“That’s a lovely insight into the origins of your sense of self-worth, there, Q, but this isn't a game of overdramatic sibling rivalry. This is British Intelligence, and if you think this isn’t going to interfere with your work, you’re mistaken.” Bond acted professional, but he was harbouring concerns now about just how unbothered about killing Q seemed, and an evident family pattern of instability. Was it possible, given that Q didn’t seem bothered at all that he might be suspended for his actions, that the younger man was delusional? No, that was a ridiculous assumption. Quite a leap at best. 

Q was silent for several moments, staring evenly at Bond as if analysing every detail about him before deciding what to do next. The Quartermaster spoke at last: “My eldest brother ― not the Sherrinford candidate: the other one ― has more influence in the British Government than the Private Secretary to the Sovereign,” he said. 

This was  _ not  _ something Bond was expecting, and he entertained, again, though humorously, the idea that perhaps Q  _ was  _ delusional. 

“Trust me, Mycroft will be strolling in at whatever time happens to be the most dramatic, ready to override any legal issues that arise about me having killed multiple people who were trying to kill  _ me,  _ mind, simply because I didn’t give MI6 a friendly little phone-call mid-attack to ask permission to defend myself. Excuse me,” Q finished, and pulled a phone out of his pocket, calling in the mess he’d made of his house. 

_ Mycroft. Undoubtedly as in Mycroft Holmes,  _ Bond pondered. This new information about his Quartermaster was fascinating, but Bond doubted that he was going to learn much more than he already knew about that interesting family dynamic. 

He did, however, make sure to be in the general vicinity to watch  _ the  _ Mycroft Holmes stroll into M’s office. Seeing the surprise on Mallory’s face and how readily he sucked up to the man was quite funny. He also learned that M hadn’t bothered to check over the files, and actually had no idea that Q was related to Mycroft in any capacity. 

While professionally Q was off the hook, Mycroft seemed to take great pleasure in asserting his authority over his younger siblings in a non-professional setting, and the meeting that the Quartermaster had with his brother later that week was not horrible, but still not altogether pleasant. 

Apparently, Mycroft Holmes will get you off the hook legally, but that doesn’t get you off the hook personally. 

_ People would have died no matter what I did, the only actions I took were to make sure that ‘people’ wasn’t me.  _

_ Well, following that logic, ‘Q’, I’m sorry to say that your actions resulted in seven deaths as opposed to one.  _

_ You’re not going to follow that logic, though.  _

_ No, but you should think about the implications of an argument before you use it.  _

What an interesting family dynamic indeed. 

**Author's Note:**

> fuckin,,,, this is bad, boys. but like pls forgive me??? what a wonderful witching hour I'm having during my between-term break.


End file.
